Testing Cheaper Printer Ink

Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "Computer users world-wide spend $22 billion a year on ink cartridges, and the big companies are getting stingier with the amount of ink they are putting into each cartridge, the Wall Street Journal reports. Entrepreneurs are seeking a slice of that market by undercutting HP and Lexmark with ink prices 20% to 50% lower. The Journal tested do-it-yourself refill kits, cartridge retail outlets and replacement cartridges from online stores to find the best way to save money on ink refills. One major finding: The quality often wasn't as good as with the name-brand cartridges."

Comments

Hmm..

[onion2k]

Ok, first thought on the quality is .. Durrr .. obviously the quality is going to be lower. Any idiot could tell you that.

However ..

Does it actually matter? Certainly I find that any documentation I want a client to see has to be *perfect*, which generally means sending it out to a proper copy shop or in-house repro facility. Internal documentation doesn't need to be anywhere near as high quality, so replacement inks are ok assuming they actually last a few years on the paper, I find thats more important than a few lines here and there.

So really where I work there isn't actually a market for "premium" ink cartridges. They're too expensive for everyday things, and not good enough for top quality things. There isn't any middle ground.

Re:Hmm..

[OglinTatas]

employee bonuses, or other incentives for saving money, may go a long way toward quieting the inevitable bitching when change is made. You've already made the cost analysis (which you have found to be positive) now push the benefits.

Re:Hmm..

[michrech]

the old Xerox Phaser 850's produced photo quality 8X10's easily. the newer xerox color Lasers certianly keep pace with the current "photo quality" inkjets, but do not compare to the high end inkjets designed specifically for photo printing.

The Xerox Phaser printers (specifically the model you mentioned) are not laser printers. They use a special wax ink stick. They do make VERY nice prints and are quite fast, however, they are DAMNED expensive to repair. We quit selling them because we were unable to obtain parts for them.

For those interested, you can get a Xerox 8400b or 8400dp for free here. You have to print quite abit to make it worth it (there is a certain minimum monthly amount you must spend with this company in supplies, however). I don't know anyone who's done it so I don't know if doing something like this is worth it but at least there isn't any stupid offers you have to fill out, no conga lines (is that what they are being called still), etc.

FWIW

---
Read my journal.

Re:Hmm..

[afedaken]

The Laserjet 4 is notoriously reliable. It's well built, and capable of handling even heavy workloads for most small to medium sized workgroups.

It's consumables are reasonably cheap, and are manufactured by dozens of third parties. It's design is known well enough that an entire cult of printer repair enthusiasts has gone through and documented fixes for all the common problems. (http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/ Maintenance, while not a joy, is easy enough to perform.

It's old enough that any operating system vitage newer than 1990 should have drivers. Sales of the unit were phenomenal, so spares are cheap to get. (Or free if you keep your eyes peeled.) New spares are still available from HP.

Quality while not outstanding, is more than adequate for office usage.

About the only bad thing I can say about this printer is that it's plastic yellows far to easily, even when not exposed to UV or sunlight.

Ironically, the LaserJet 4's print engine isn't even made by HP. Canon is responsible for the guts of this thing.

Inkjets? Who needs them?

[Zog The Undeniable]

We never really use our inkjet at home. Most stuff gets sent to the ageing (7 y/o) Panasonic b/w laser printer, which was only 200UKP new - probably 120UKP for today's equivalent - and is on only its third toner cartridge.

Digital photos are printed on proper photographic paper using a web-based service which returns the (non-fading, and remarkably cheap) prints in the post two days later.

Quality

[turbofisk]

What is it exactly that makes the quality worse? Is the ink less good? You would think they could fix that and add a buck or two - and still slap the HP and Lexmark on their fingers...

If you use Inkjets then you need to rethink.

[jellomizer]

Honestly InkJets printers have the highest costs per print vs. Laser or Solid Ink. And the cost of these printers have dropped Rapidly.
Samsung Makes a Color Laser Printer for $600 that comes with full cartridges, which covers about 10,000 prints. vs Paying $80 for an Ink Jet and $70 for ink every 500 prints. If you do the math you find you are saving a lot of money in the long run. Also Solid Ink is really good too, just as good if not better then Laser for Cost/Page. (And for those you probably said they heat their old TekSolid ink, Solid ink has improved greatly in the past 5 years and are just as reliable as a good laser printer)

Go for *some* brand names

[benk]

I remember searching this out extensively when I took on a colour Epson printer from my brother. I don't have links to the sources, but I recall that the nutshell answer was that some manufacturers' prices were better or comperable to the generics, and some were worse.

Apart from factoring in cost of replacing print heads more often, and potential problems with DRM or voiding your warranty if they allege damage was caused by use of non-original ink (which I think in the US is in violation of the Magnuson-Moss Act, but I don't think is so here in Oz, tho I haven't checked) I recall there were two main factors:

One was capacity of generic cartridges - some have a smaller volume than the original, and hence this has to be factored in against their cheaper cost. Off the bat, this made the generics only marginally cheaper than the original for my printer. (I'm talking new cartridges, not refills).

The other was the quality of the print job. I was looking for a colour printer for photos, and it matters to me that the printouts would last perhaps 1-2 yrs before fading for the generics, versus a much longer (supposed) lifestyle for the Epson ink. Why save a couple of bucks if the photo will fade in its frame?

For me the answer was simple, and the Epson was much better value than the generic stuff. I recall finding material that suggested that it wasn't so clear cut for ink from other manufacturers, in particular HP. But I didn't chase that down.

fwiw, reading other peoples' experiences that it took a number of printouts before the generic ink replaced the original in the printer heads, and to expect smearing and poor quality until then, didn't exactly engender confidence that the inks were of comparable makeup.

Re:Inkjets? Who needs them?

[hey!]

We've got an HP laser of about the same vintage. I think it was over five years before we had to replace the toner cartridge. My wife told me there was something wrong with the printer, and looking at her printouts my first thought was, "do they even sell the cartridges for this thing anymore?" Of course they do. You can get toner cartridges for the original laserjets

We also recently got an inkjet printer for the odd color document and for photos. Now a photo takes a tremendous amount of ink, to be fair. But we dont' really print photos that often; we're actually more likely to look at them on the screen. I'd say say we print photos about as often as I print things like refernce manuals on the laser. So while things may not be exactly equal, it's still fairly safe to say that we spend more on ink in six months than we spend in toner in five years.

Refills Kill a Printer

[duffer_01]

I have used refill kits in the past and although they are cheap I find they tend to mess up your printer heads. I have lost two printers in the past to these refills. Now, I just use new cartridges.

Re:Inkjets? Who needs them?

[squoozer]

<disclaimer>I used to work for one of the online digital printing service providers.</disclaimer>

The quality of the prints was, I have to admit, pretty damn good. When I first started there the service was quite expensive and it was touch and go whether it was worth sending off to have them printed. By the time I left though the price had dropped greatly and the quality remained (at least in the basic prints anyway).

It's worth shopping round, you can get some really good deals such as a second set for free. The cheapest always used to be (in the UK at least) Bonus Print but they were cheap because they only did a very limited number of print sizes. There are loads of other services out there that will print you photos onto just about anything you can think (we even did a toy bear for a while!). The quality of the other stuff though is questionable at best. A 2MPixel camera will produce a pretty good A4 sized print.

I'm sure I will get shouted at for promoting it but there is actually a fairly good digital printing client built into XP. You select a folder with images in it and then select print from the left hand menu (you need folder view tured off). It will give you a list with a number of printing service providers. I don't know if it still works though - since leaving the company I have stopped using Windows.

the history of this warranty issue is interesting!

[ecalkin]

for a while (mid '80s), hp was starting to feel pressure on refilled toner cartridges and started making statements about refilled and/or third party toners breaking the warranty. i'm not sure that this was ever 'official' hp policy.
however, one day this stopped very suddenly. it turns out that there is federal law that says that if replaceable/consumable parts/materials by third parties will void the warranty, then those parts/materieals have to be provided free under the warranty. apparently, someone called hp on this and they have taken great care to note that the use of this stuff will *not* void the warranty. if it leaks, breaks, etc is a diffenty story.

eric

Depends on the quality of the ink, I guess

[Matey-O]

I bought a refill kit at Costco as it was the first one I'd found that had Photo Cyan, and Photo Magenta (for 6 color prints)

Aside from the hassle, I couldn't see a noticible difference in the prints after refilling. The _second_ refill however had a color drop out and I was too lazy to troubleshoot it. That's the nice thing about the HP printers - new cart = new print nozzles.

So, I'm pretty happy with at least one refill per cartridge...I also don't really mind the cost of the ink...you either pay now or pay later, I don't see why folks haven't figured that out.

Now, when my Laser Printer finally kicks off (May be soon, I doubt I'll replace the photo drum on a, geeze, 8 year old printer), I may seriously investigate a color Laser printer with an ethernet port on it...I've seen them as low as $350 w/o NIC and $450 with one.

Re:CIFS is the way to go

[cryogenix]

We had a group try this at my work. It was "ok" but just ok.. The color quality was much better than the originals. It was an epson 1280 at the time. We called it the borg printer because of all the tubes coming out of it :)

bah

[chrish]

I gave up on inkjets and bought a decent but inexpensive laser (Lexmark E232). It cost me less than my first inkjet (an HP Deskjet 500 back in the day), and I've found that I really don't need to print in colour that often.

The E232 is ridiculously fast, too, which is great.

I've still got my inkjet (a crappy Lexmark Z32) on the off chance that I really do need to print colour some day, although I'm more likely to drop a PDF onto a CD and take it to a print shop... it'll be much cheaper than investing in new ink.

Here..everybody has their own inkjet...

[Danathar]

If you can believe it everybody here at the unamed government agency I work for has their own inkjet printer. Why? Because they are too lazy to get up and walk over to the $20K floor copier that nobody uses.

Sometimes the Federal Gov boggles my mind....when I worked in the private sector if I had asked my manager for a personal ink jet printer he would of passed out laughing and then after recovering would tell me to get back to work, use the floor copier and don't EVER ask for something so stupid again!

Re:Here..everybody has their own inkjet...

[Spoing]

If you can believe it everybody here at the unamed government agency I work for has their own inkjet printer. Why? Because they are too lazy to get up and walk over to the $20K floor copier that nobody uses.

Or the manager in charge of the department decided that that was one way to spend the rest of the budget.

True story;

My father worked at one of the federal agencies as a department manager. After many years, he secured a job with the UN.

He called me asking about printers, and what I thought about some small HP laser that was popular at the time. Thinking he needed it for himself, I gave him the pros and cons, then he said...

"No, it's not for me, it's for the office."

'Why not use the main printer. Have your IT people deal with it in one place.'

"We don't have one...not in my department."

'Well, you'll need a larger printer for your department.'

"Listen, I have to spend this money and it turns out that if I get everyone a printer I'll be on budget."

'Everyone?'

"One for each desk. Wouldn't that be nice?"

...

The conversation went on with me begging him not to waste the money and to cut down on the eventual hassles of extra printers (waste, maintenance, space). At the end, it was clear that I didn't get it. He could not under any situation come in under budget. If he did, his department would be cut back. Period. Getting the money back next year if he needed it would be painful...so he was getting the printers.

(Note: He told me later that this is the same with the Federal agencies he worked for...so don't go single out the UN for being wasteful.)

As my toner order just arrived

[Ilgaz]

I couldn't stand not posting it. I got 2 working inkjets using different technologies and I have nothing against them.

The stuff here needed huge amount of printouts, I had a spare money and I got really tired of buying ink (original) or printing via clone stuff (which DOES have diff.) so I went and bought a Epson C1100 Colour Laser.

The brand choice was not so random, I did my usual trick, checked around which brand does really care about OS X development etc.

The thing is, I really feel like I wasted huge amount of money to ink. Because of a illustration I misunderstood, I spilled 75% of toner (dust?) which you know, no printer comes with full. It was stated on manual already.

As I am lucky(!), my mailbox under that situation (black toner warning) has become full with 200 page word documents which _have to get printed_. Believe or not, that spilled toner printed:

443 total pages, 262 of them colour, 181 B/W

Of course I am not mad to count :) Printer counts, just printed a status sheet. Yes, that postscript show off page still prints, Epson still warns me that I should get a toner before it ends.

I am not advertising a particular brand/model here but staring to the ink packages I still have on desk, I say something is wrong with inkjet technology.

If I had to print 30 pages/month, I would stay with ink of course.

Re:White ink?

[jcostantino]

The Alps MD series printers could do spot white color. They could do spot metallic color too with the same process.

The 'ink' was one wax ribbon that looked like a single-use typewriter ribbon per color. They sounded like they were going to fall apart when printing anything.

I had one but got rid of it due to high(er) consumable costs, harder to find consumables and the fact that it stopped loading paper without a fight. When it worked - and didn't get cat hair in the printout - it looked amazing!